How to work the Five types of Media to your Advantage

New way to think about the 5 types of media: Paid, Earned, Search, Social and Home media

Back in the 1990s, we would have thought the 5 types of media would have been TV, newspaper, magazine, out of home and radio. Life was simpler back then. But since 2000, media has exploded and shifted dramatically. Now Brand Leaders are confused as to what to do and how to leverage media to drive their brands.

PAID media is the Traditional (TV, Print, OOH, Radio) and the new Digital options. While paid might look like an equal opportunity to the equal spender, its not always the case. The more Beloved brands win in this space because they get asked first, they get better slots, lower rates, and more integrations.

With EARNED media, you need to create and manage the news cycle with mainstream news, expert reviews and blogs. Beloved Brands are newsworthy and new Products are a story. My own belief is that every brand should have a PR plan. News is such a ubiquitous part of our current lives–you need to be part of that news cycle.

SEARCH Engine Optimization balances earned, key words and paid search. Being a famous Beloved Brand helps to bypass paid SEO. So if you are fighting against the power of those beloved brands, you need to leverage search as a way to break through. On more complicated purchases (cars, electronics, travel) search is an essential tool for the consumer to gain more information before they get comfortable with the purchase options.

For SOCIAL media, we need to first stop thinking that it’s free. It’s not. It’s resource intensive to do it right. And the more Beloved Brands have advocates that follow, put their views forward and share news on the brand that creates positive interactions that helps to influence others. While you can build up your social, you might need to first build your brand so that the effort you do via social media pays off. Nothing worse than an embarrassing social following. I drove past a gravel pit last year that said “Like us on Facebook”. What a waste of effort to get 19 people–mostly employees and friends. How about “Rocks $9 a pound” would have been a better option.

HOME media is your landing page. It’s a destination for some brands or could be a complete waste of time for others. Depends on the type of brand you have. Your website where you can use as a source of information, influence or even closing the sale. If e-commerce makes sense for your business.

Where is your Brand?

Before deciding what type of media you want, you need to first understand where your brand is. I’m a big believer in the Brand Love Curve where brands go from Indifferent to Like It to Love It and all the way to Beloved. If you start to look at how media might match up to that love curve and framed through a consumer buying system, we can see that when your brand is INDIFFERENT, your main focus should be using awareness and consideration to drive trial for your brand. That would mean announcement style media (mass, targeted digital, event) as well as starting to play in the search area so you can help facilitate consumers looking for more information.

As you move to the LIKE IT stage, you want to begin separating yourself at the store level. Yes, you still need the awareness, but you want to make sure that you drive at the crowded retail level to separate yourself from your competitors. This could mean point of sale signage or even the influence of experts at the store level. If consumers are satisfied, you should be pushing them to share that positive experience with others. Here’s where social media plays a large role, whether it’s traditional social media (Facebook or twitter) or the more influential social media such as YELP or IMDB. As you move along the curve to LOVED and BELOVED brands as well as matching to the buying system, you’ll start to see the growing importance of event marketing to core users or social media as a badge of honor to share with others.

The problem I have with many media options, is people at the INDIFFERENT stage think they need a Facebook page. Well, once all your relatives like that page, you might have 46 followers, which might expose how little people care about you. On the flip side, I still am seeing LOVED brands pounding out 30 second TV ads that tell the consumers what they already know, all but forgetting the other media options available to them.